Publications
Educational Publications
Educational Publications
Selected publications about earthquakes In plain language.
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Should ground-motion records be rotated to fault-normal/parallel or maximum direction for response history analysis of buildings?
In the United States, regulatory seismic codes (for example, California Building Code) require at least two sets of horizontal ground-motion components for three-dimensional (3D) response history analysis (RHA) of building structures. For sites within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of an active fault, these records should be rotated to fault-normal and fault-parallel (FN/FP) directions, and two RHAs sho
Authors
Juan C. Reyes, Erol Kalkan
Advanced earthquake monitoring system for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical buildings--instrumentation
In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the National Strong Motion Project (NSMP; http://nsmp.wr.usgs.gov/) of the U.S. Geological Survey has been installing sophisticated seismic systems that will monitor the structural integrity of 28 VA hospital buildings located in seismically active regions of the conterminous United States, Alaska, and Puerto Rico during earthquak
Authors
Erol Kalkan, Krishna Banga, Hasan S. Ulusoy, Jon Peter B. Fletcher, William S. Leith, Shahneam Reza, Timothy Cheng
Earthquake recurrence models fail when earthquakes fail to reset the stress field
Parkfield's regularly occurring M6 mainshocks, about every 25 years, have over two decades stoked seismologists' hopes to successfully predict an earthquake of significant size. However, with the longest known inter-event time of 38 years, the latest M6 in the series (28 Sep 2004) did not conform to any of the applied forecast models, questioning once more the predictability of earthquakes in gene
Authors
Thessa Tormann, Stefan Wiemer, Jeanne L. Hardebeck
New "Risk-Targeted" Seismic Maps Introduced into Building Codes
Throughout most municipalities of the United States, structural engineers design new buildings using the U.S.-focused International Building Code (IBC). Updated editions of the IBC are published every 3 years. The latest edition (2012) contains new "risk-targeted maximum considered earthquake" (MCER) ground motion maps, which are enabling engineers to incorporate a more consistent and better defin
Authors
Nicholas Luco, B. Garrett, J. Hayes
Earthquake ground motion
Most of the effort in seismic design of buildings and other structures is focused on structural design. This chapter addresses another key aspect of the design process—characterization of earthquake ground motion. Section 3.1 describes the basis of the earthquake ground motion maps in the Provisions and in ASCE 7. Section 3.2 has examples for the determination of ground motion parameters and spect
Authors
Nicolas Luco, Michael Valley, C.B. Crouse
Developing ShakeCast statistical fragility analysis framework for rapid post-earthquake assessment
When an earthquake occurs, the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) ShakeMap estimates the extent of potentially damaging shaking and provides overall information regarding the affected areas. The USGS ShakeCast system is a freely-available, post-earthquake situational awareness application that automatically retrieves earthquake shaking data from ShakeMap, compares intensity measures against users’ fac
Authors
K.-W. Lin, D.J. Wald
Improving PAGER's real-time earthquake casualty and loss estimation toolkit: a challenge
We describe the on-going developments of PAGER’s loss estimation models, and discuss value-added web content that can be generated related to exposure, damage and loss outputs for a variety of PAGER users. These developments include identifying vulnerable building types in any given area, estimating earthquake-induced damage and loss statistics by building type, and developing visualization aids t
Authors
K. S. Jaiswal, D.J. Wald
Impact-based earthquake alerts with the U.S. Geological Survey's PAGER system: what's next?
In September 2010, the USGS began publicly releasing earthquake alerts for significant earthquakes around the globe based on estimates of potential casualties and economic losses with its Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system. These estimates significantly enhanced the utility of the USGS PAGER system which had been, since 2006, providing estimated population exposure
Authors
D.J. Wald, K. S. Jaiswal, K. D. Marano, D. Garcia, E. So, M. Hearne
Developing Vs30 site-condition maps by combining observations with geologic and topographic constraints
Despite obvious limitations as a proxy for site amplification, the use of time-averaged shear-wave velocity over the top 30 m (VS30) remains widely practiced, most notably through its use as an explanatory variable in ground motion prediction equations (and thus hazard maps and ShakeMaps, among other applications). As such, we are developing an improved strategy for producing VS30 maps given the c
Authors
E.M. Thompson, D.J. Wald
ShakeMap Atlas 2.0: an improved suite of recent historical earthquake ShakeMaps for global hazard analyses and loss model calibration
We introduce the second version of the U.S. Geological Survey ShakeMap Atlas, which is an openly-available compilation of nearly 8,000 ShakeMaps of the most significant global earthquakes between 1973 and 2011. This revision of the Atlas includes: (1) a new version of the ShakeMap software that improves data usage and uncertainty estimations; (2) an updated earthquake source catalogue that include
Authors
D. Garcia, R.T. Mah, K. L. Johnson, M.G. Hearne, K. D. Marano, K.-W. Lin, D.J. Wald
Revelations from ambient shaking data of a recently instrumented unique building at MIT campus
A state-of-the-art seismic monitoring system comprising 36 accelerometers and a data-logger with real-time capability was recently installed at Building 54 on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], Cambridge, Massachusetts. The system is designed to record translational, torsional and rocking motions, and to facilitate computation of drift between select pairs of stories. T
Authors
Mehmet Çelebi, N. Toksoz, O. Buyukozturk